Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena Genre : Thriller Stand alone About the Book  : In this family, everyone is keeping secrets–especially the dead. Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don’t come much richer than Fred and Sheila Mercer. But even all their money can’t protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mercers are brutally murdered the...

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen Genre : YA Stand alone About the Book  : Emma Saylor doesn’t remember a lot about her mother, who died when she was ten. Now it’s just Emma and her dad, and life is good… until Emma is unexpectedly sent to spend the summer with her mother’s family. When Emma arrives at North Lake, she realizes there are actually two very different communities there. Her mother grew up in working class North Lake,...

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan Pages : 528 Genre : Fiction Stand alone My Rating : 5/5 About the Book  : For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. As three generations of women arrive at the family’s beach house, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her...

Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols Pages : 325 Genre : YA, Contemporary Stand alone My Rating : 3/5 About the Book  : Heaven Beach, South Carolina, is anything but, if you live at the low-rent end of town. All her life, Leah Jones has been the grown-up in her family, while her mother moves from boyfriend to boyfriend, letting any available money slip out of her hands. At school, they may diss Leah as trash, but she’s the one who...

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick Pages : 394 Genre : YA, Contemporary Stand alone My Rating : 3.5/5 About the Book  : The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, messy, affectionate. And every day from her rooftop perch, Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them . . . until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs up next to her and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely for each other, stumbling through the...

Dark Rooms by Lili Anolik Pages : 336 Genre : Mystery Stand alone My Rating : 3/5 About the Book  : Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly—a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession—but memory and instinct won’t allow Nica’s older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed. Dropping out of college and living at...

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum Pages : 324 Genre : Literary Fiction Stand alone My Rating : 4.5/5 About the Book  : Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband Bruno and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or...

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell Pages : 328 Genre : YA, Contemporary Stand alone My Rating : 4/5 About the Book  : Eleanor… Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough…Eleanor. Park… He knows she’ll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever...